Lose horses, and your morale!

Excuse me if this has already been listed. I was playing a simple game yesterday and noticed something quite peculiar. Imperial Knights have the trait good morale listed in their traits on their unit card, as does any knight unit for obvious reasonings. Yet Dismounted Imperial Knights do not have this trait listed in the traits on their unit card. Is this simply a mistake and the trait does not show up on the card yet they receive the bonus or is this simply another stroke of genius CA logic? :inquisitive:

Tschüß!
Erich

Whether this attribute displays is subject to the numerical value for morale in the EDU.
Most knights have 9. Dismounted Imperials have 5 for some reason or another.

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As to why that is so, I'm not sure, but if you look at the other primary mace wiedling dismounted knight, it also has 5. Admittedly Dismounted Mercenary German Knights are not implemented for anything but slave and I have never seem them in a rebel stack.

The only logic reason I can think up for this is the following:

When you're on a horse, you're looking down on your adversaries. You are probably on an armoured horse, which is a bit like a tank, or maybe an armoured jeep. You have a long spear that can impale people. You can charge at your opponents and deal crushing blows that way.

As opposed to:

When you're on foot, you're much closer to the ground. You feel small, vulnerable, ESPECIALLY against all those other knights who are on horses! All you have is a sword, and a shield if you're lucky. Your armour may protect you from some blows, but it is also heavy, and you don't have a horse to carry it around for you. A charge tires you and you find yourself in the middle of the action without any way to get out.

Wouldn't you run? :beam:

Anyway, that's MY logic.

Wouldn't explain why its only those two dismounted knight units suffering from it, unless they hate using their maces.

Maybe they just like the feel of a horse under them and they feel naked without it? Their maces just don't give the comforts a horse's back can give...

Probably it hasn't really got a reason though... If they are the only knights who suffer from a drop in morale once you take their horses I assume it's just, well... a mistake.

It is either another stroke of illogical CA logic and not added or it was mistakingly left out for dismounted Imperial/German knights. It seems as if I should simply unpack and begin editing the files and modding M2 because so many of these blunders are making the game nigh unplayable.

Tschüß!
Erich

Well the low morale for DIK seems to be intentional or at least i think it is. DIK seem to have lower stats than DCK/AS/NS for a reason, probably to show the lack of really high quality late era infantry for HRE.

They are almost as expensive as DFK though, which makes them redundant.

Not really, the mace with ap makes them pretty useful in melee against heavily armoured opponentsd.

It would make sense that that was what was in mind had they given mounted Imperial/German knights the lose of morale but they didn't. And on terms of lower stats, this is true but all knights should have good morale, Imperial/German knights being of no exception. I would rather enjoy using Imperial knights a bit more often than outdated DFK which have stats which can ride you through the game anyway...

Agreed with you Lusted on the mace, which is AP, being very good against armored infantry. It almost seemingly gives them the ability to mow through anything armored but Imperial knights will not hold up as long in a fight as other knights. Which is both absurd and leaves them lacking in the long run.

Tschüß!
Erich

Almost certainly a balancing decision rather than a realism decision.

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Agreed with you Lusted on the mace, which is AP, being very good against armored infantry. It almost seemingly gives them the ability to mow through anything armored but Imperial knights will not hold up as long in a fight as other knights. Which is both absurd and leaves them lacking in the long run.

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Not really, as you say they can mow through armoured targets but they have low morale so don't last as long as other units in melee. So that balances them out.

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Originally Posted by TinCow

Almost certainly a balancing decision rather than a realism decision.

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Perhaps, but if so CA really messed up balancing here. How much does the AP benefit a unit? Let's say it halves the armour bonus.

So we have:

DFK: att 13; def 21 (armour 7 => give the DIK +4 to attack for AP)
DIK: att 9 (+4); def 17

By my math, the DFK is attacking at -4 and the DIK at -9.

The DIK are worse. They don't need a cut to morale to compound their inferiority.

Even against the heaviest (e.g. Gothics' armour 10), the DIK are worse by virtue of their lower defence (which comes about due to a defence skill of 3 compared to DFKs 8).

I suspect Lusted is right - it is a realism, not balancing, thing to simulate poor late period German foot. But it does not work as intended because DFK are still available to HRE in the end game. It just means DIK should never be hired. They should have obsoleted DFK and prevent them being hired after a certain date if they wanted to model the obsolescence point (as happened with VG in the MTW, for example).

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Originally Posted by Lusted

Not really, as you say they can mow through armoured targets but they have low morale so don't last as long as other units in melee. So that balances them out.

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Balanced or not I still believe that they should have the good morale trait and bonus like any other knight unit. It would be a bit more understandable if they were perhaps Imperial Men-at-Arms. Their lack of morale is definitely felt in moments where several men are lost at once, which almost always causes the 'knights' to waver and retreat. Whereas any other knight unit such as DFK could take the same hit and continue fighting due to their higher morale.

Tschüß!
Erich

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So we have:

DFK: att 13; def 21 (armour 7 => give the DIK +4 to attack for AP)
DIK: att 9 (+4); def 17

By my math, the DFK is attacking at -4 and the DIK at -9.

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Your forgetting the fact that ap reduces the DFK defense to 17, and the DIK with +4 have an attack of 13 so they're both attacking at the same.

Though frankly i haven't played with vanilla unit stats in a while, in LTC DIK cost 460, have 7 attack + ap, a defense of 17 and 5 morale. DFK cost 510, have an attack of 11, have a defense of 16 and 9 morale, so they balance out.

I think maybe HRE shouldn't have access to DFK and FK and have their imperial and dmt imperials at those times.
The two handers you get from the highest level barracks are also weaker than the DFK overall, although they have a slightly higher charge bonus.
GK have a slightly higher attack than other cav available to HRE but their defense stat is subpar to other late period knights.

But its really just due to 1.02's shield fix that messes the values up now, as non shielded units were stronger than shielded ones and now they are trash units with high cost.

Well not really Lusted. They get a +4 bonus, not a +8 bonus.
AP doesn't mean it attacks both at +4 more and subtracts 4 from the DFK in addition.
So after considering that, DFK would have 13/21 vs DIK 13/17 OR DFK 13/17 vs DIK 9/17.

Plus DIK may cost 30 less to hire, but have the same upkeep and 4 less morale.

I thought AP totally ignored the armor of a unit, not just half of it.

No ap means only half the unit being attacked armour is taken into account.

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Originally Posted by Fußball

Is this simply a mistake and the trait does not show up on the card yet they receive the bonus or is this simply another stroke of genius CA logic? :inquisitive:

Tschüß!
Erich

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It is probably meant to be like that. I don't think there's any logical reason for it.

I don't think it is an error. DIK also have a low defence skill to go with their low morale. (Unless maces are supposed to be less good for defence than swords.)

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Originally Posted by econ21

I don't think it is an error. DIK also have a low defence skill to go with their low morale. (Unless maces are supposed to be less good for defence than swords.)

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That's because all sword units get a +3 "parry" bonus to defense. This was discussed in another thread (can't remember which) but the fact is that every sword unit has 3 more points in defense than similar units with different weaps.

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Originally Posted by Kobal2fr

That's because all sword units get a +3 "parry" bonus to defense. This was discussed in another thread (can't remember which) but the fact is that every sword unit has 3 more points in defense than similar units with different weaps.

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I thought something like that might be going on, but it may not be the whole story. DFK are defence skill 8 - DIK are defence skill 3. DIKs are being hit by 2 extra points above and beyond the 3 attributable to differences in weapon and have a morale nerf of 4 points.

In older TW games, quality adjustments were often done at the rate of 1 point of attack and 2 points of morale, so I reckon DIKs are supposed to be a couple of grades of quality below DFK.

Remember that excel file CA released for MTW showing how they derived the unit stats from assumptions about weapon values, quality, armour etc? I am pretty sure they still get their stats in such a systematic way, it's just they stopped releasing such a thing after MTW to protect their commercial interests (stop rival companies cloning their system).

All in all I think DIK/DGK should have the added morale. It would not unbalance them much and would make them much more worth using than the aging DFK. And it only makes sense that they are knights and should have the good morale trait. I personally like using a mix of both since DFK is one of the only German sword units not counting zweihänder. But with stats DFK are overall better in the vanilla game.

Tschüß!
Erich

What I've done for my own game was to change DFK to be 12/19 and DIK to 11/17 and 8 morale.
In a standard matchup with no upgrades, the outcome is quite balanced and neither side always wins the upper hand.
Considering DIK require a citadel as opposed to a castle and the mounted version of a DIK is better than a FK, that seemed like a good compromise without giving HRE too strong of a foot unit besides making DFK less overpowered in general (I did change the stats for a lot of units downward though)

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Originally Posted by econ21

I thought something like that might be going on, but it may not be the whole story. DFK are defence skill 8 - DIK are defence skill 3. DIKs are being hit by 2 extra points above and beyond the 3 attributable to differences in weapon and have a morale nerf of 4 points.

In older TW games, quality adjustments were often done at the rate of 1 point of attack and 2 points of morale, so I reckon DIKs are supposed to be a couple of grades of quality below DFK.

Remember that excel file CA released for MTW showing how they derived the unit stats from assumptions about weapon values, quality, armour etc? I am pretty sure they still get their stats in such a systematic way, it's just they stopped releasing such a thing after MTW to protect their commercial interests (stop rival companies cloning their system).

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I'm sure there's a point to it, there's no question about that - the +3 sword def doesn't explain the whole thing.

Still, that point would have been driven home best by... oh, I don't know, giving the HRE DIKs INSTEAD of DFKs ? Then it would have made sense : they'd have a flavorfull counter to the rest of the world's reliance on swords in their very own brand of AP paingivers. Only they don't, and DIKs end up being, well, useless, because no one's going to train those when they can build better, blander DFKs.

Actually, that's an all-encompassing problem : all cath factions get DFKs. Some cath factions have their own brand of dismounted knights based on their own cultural variation on the Feudal Knight concept. Why both ? :thumbsdown:

Currently with the 1.2 fixes the only German foot unit that is effective on a unit v. unit basis is DFK. Because all the zweihänder units are trash at the moment with the current fixes and balances. Like I have stated before DIK can mow through an armored target given the right circumstances. But against another good knight unit the AP does not give much advantage and the lack of morale makes DIK retreat after taking enough damage, unlike every other knight unit.

On another note I am not in agreement with those wanting to take out DFK for all Catholic factions at some point. For factions like HRE those are the only sword wielding 'typical' knights beside General's bodyguard. And plus, as much as I love the idea of smashing an opponent with my mace & morningstar wielding units, I do enjoy having one sword wielding knight unit to use. :yes:

Tschüß!
Erich

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Originally Posted by Fußball

On another note I am not in agreement with those wanting to take out DFK for all Catholic factions at some point. For factions like HRE those are the only sword wielding 'typical' knights beside General's bodyguard. And plus, as much as I love the idea of smashing an opponent with my mace & morningstar wielding units, I do enjoy having one sword wielding knight unit to use. :yes:

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Lusted's LtC solves this problem very elegantly in my opinion : as unit training buildings go up the tech ladder, older units disappear from them. For instance, the early city barracks let you train town militia, then town mil + spear mil, then only spear mil + archer mil, and later on only archer mil + pike mil (and since towns only give free upkeep to units they can train, you kinda have to move on).

By the same token, DFKs are gradually phased out of the world in favor of more modern units (plus he tweaked unit stats so that later units are actually better, which is the icing on the cake, but even without doing that, his idea would have made a lot of sense)

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Originally Posted by Kobal2fr

By the same token, DFKs are gradually phased out of the world in favor of more modern units (plus he tweaked unit stats so that later units are actually better, which is the icing on the cake, but even without doing that, his idea would have made a lot of sense)

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Sounds an elegant solution. :bow: I wonder if there is any chance of CA tweaking the main campaign along those lines with the kingdoms expansion? Especially with Lusted going to work there...

I remember STW/MI tweaked some stuff quite a bit (e.g. making castles and cavalry quicker to build/obtain).

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I wonder if there is any chance of CA tweaking the main campaign along those lines with the kingdoms expansion? Especially with Lusted going to work there...

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I'll be at CA UK not CA Oz, CA Oz are the guys working on Kingdoms.

Belated congrats on the position with CA, Lusted. :bow:

Tschüß!
Erich